The protest rally was held to condemn the decision by the French satirical magazine to recirculate cartoons about the Prophet of Islam, Press TV reported.

The demonstrators from all walks of life, including university students, held placards in condemnation of Charlie Hebdo’s Islamophobic move.

They also criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to condemn the blasphemous cartoons in the name of freedom of expression, arguing the move cannot be justified by any means under the pretext of freedom of speech.

Releasing a statement at the end of the rally, the protestors said the heinous move of the French weekly has violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“The move not only proved the false nature of the threadbare slogans of Western circles regarding freedom of expression, but it also explicitly revealed the complicity of the Zionist lobby in France ,” read the statement.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a Twitter message slammed the offensive moves against Muslims’ Holy Book and Prophet in the western countries.

“Freedom of Expression? Or Institutionalized Hypocrisy? Instigate violence and hatred against 1.8 Billion Muslims by stereotypical defamation and desecration of their Holy Book and Prophet,” Zarif tweeted.

Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei also reacted to reprinting of the blasphemous cartoons referring to the move as “unforgivable” adding that Zionists were behind it.

“The grave and unforgivable sin committed by a French weekly in insulting the luminous and holy personality of the Great Messenger of God (God’s greetings be upon him and his Household) revealed, once more, the hostility and malicious grudge harbored by the political and cultural organizations in the West against Islam and the Muslim community,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in an English-language statement.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also condemned the move saying it was a “Zionist-American scheme meant to deflect the global public opinion from ongoing plots in the West Asia region.”

The failure of the hostile policies of the global hegemony and Zionism against the Islamic Ummah and the truncation of their chained scenarios in [promoting] Islamophobia prompted rulers of the terrorist regime of the US and the fake Zionist regime to unveil new and already doomed plots to deflect the world public opinion, in particular the Islamic Ummah, from what is going on in the strategic region of West Asia,” read part of the IRGC statement.

The French weekly reprinted the blasphemous caricatures on the eve of the trial of suspects in a deadly gun rampage on its office in early 2015.

In January 2015, two men barged into the newspaper’s Paris offices, killing 12 people, many of whom worked for the publication.

The terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo were French-born brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who claimed the attacks in the name of al-Qaeda. They were killed in police raids at the time.

The blasphemous cartoons have drawn strong criticism from Muslim countries who call it an Islamophobic act.